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Talk:WataMote Chapter 159/@comment-37874552-20190623134531
I was thinking about Asuka, this morning, from the point of view of a parent. If you don't like Wall of Text, don't even start to read this. It's easy for people to think that good parents, if they pour love into their children with enough discipline to help them going forward, will end up with kids who are just fine. Unfortunately, parents tend to think this. But it's not true. Parents, even the best, cannot make sure of anything along those lines. Say you have a loving, kind, smart, easygoing, beautiful daughter interested from early on in make-up and things of that sort. Surely she's not going anything that would make her insecure. Her gorgeous mother, who looks like her sister, gives her a role model as a woman. Her big brother, who she greatly admires, loves and protects her, etc. But her mom is a little too gorgeous for the girl; it's hard to keep up, so she has to keep learning how women stay pretty. The big brother gets most the focus from the parents and the girl admires him, so his choice of college is her choice and the light that shines on him is where it seems best to be. The girl grows up. Everyone, including her parents, think she's just fine. She's beautiful, loving, smart, easygoing, and kind, as usual. Her enjoyment of make-up etc. just keeps going, so she's encouraged along those lines. And she doesn't complain or raise any flags about herself. But maybe there's a part of her that feels she'll never be "special". She'll never be as gorgeous as her mother or as stellar as her brother, both of whom she genuinely and with good reason loves. But she's just not "special." She wants that. So she meets this scruffy, contrary, awkward, messed-up little misfit of a girl who blossoms to her touch. It's not just "sisterly", it's more than that. With this girl, Asuka is special. The girl clearly responds to her, thinks she's special. The girl doesn't always pay first attention to Asuka; that's understandable because she had some friends when Asuka met her. But the girl is special to Asuka and Asuka is special to the girl. Until she seems not to be. Asuka invites Tomoko to the college where she wants to go and expresses her hope that they can be together in the future; that one goes wobbly and still is wobbly, as Tomoko isn't fixed on anything. Attempts to please the girl by helping her, even along lines that bewilder Asuka's friends like the offer with her boobs, start falling to the side. And now there's the suspension. Most people would rightly say "Oh for the love of God, Tomoko is just somewhere else for six days" and "She's tired and kind of a self-involved jerk anyway, of course she won't call." But not Asuka. Because increasingly, she's realizing she's not "special" to Tomoko the way she wants to be, and as she gets more and more nervous about this, she gets more and more neurotic about perceived slights. Asuka, the beautiful and normal girl who really is normal, who has a loving normal family that really is loving and normal, who is both ultra-femme and secretly intelligent... Emotionally, she's dangling over a pit. Thinking back on high school, this was the rule for almost everyone I knew, not the exception. No one knew what they were doing, what they were worth, where they were going, or even who they truly loved. They just felt insight, confusion, joy, and pain. They were firing on all cylinders but just a few years after entering puberty the brakes weren't working. And frequently, if they had problems, no one knew or if they knew, knew why. Parents can look square at them and not have the slightest idea that something is wrong. Parenting Asuka? Whoa, that could be hard. "She's really the perfect daughter, as far as I'm concerned." At school, the perfect daughter is coming apart at the seams because her strange little pet/ward hasn't communicated except with her "real" friends for three whole days. Asuka is normal. She is beautiful. She is kind and loving. She is intelligent. She truly is interested in others and supportive even of strangers. She's a great kid. Any parent would kill to have a child like that, even if they love their own. But she doesn't feel special. She's afraid that she just can't be nice enough, loving enough, to keep people she likes around, especially this little hairball of a girl who she cherishes. All this is aside from other questions like the yuri possibilities. These are just issues related to every single teenager I was or knew, and to the parents who may not have even seen anything wrong. So the absolutely good kid is the first to get pregnant, wreck a car, attempt suicide, or rob a bank. Asuka is not doing any of those things, but she doesn't feel "special." Hence her disconcerting behavior in recent chapters, through the privileged lens of the creators. She is special. Those who love her know that, but she does not.